


The Long Road

by cassieoh



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: A cottage on the South Downs, Action/Adventure, Angelic Healing, Anxious Crowley (Good Omens), Crowley's Century-Long Nap (Good Omens), Demonic summoning, Historical, Historical Figures, Hurt Crowley (Good Omens), Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Miscommunication, Protective Aziraphale (Good Omens), settling together, the carpathia, the titanic, these dorks think they're spies and i love them for it
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-19
Updated: 2020-01-19
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:34:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21855334
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cassieoh/pseuds/cassieoh
Summary: The year is 1912 and Aziraphale is lonely. He decides to take a short jaunt across the pond to the Americas is just the ticket to take his mind off that little spat with Crowley all those years ago. Things go, quite predictably, awry. Meanwhile, Crowley awakes from his nap a few years early and goes looking for trouble.The year is 2019 and the Apocalypse is over. Crowley and Aziraphale decide to move out to the South Downs. Unbeknownst to Crowley, the charming little shepherd’s cottage Aziraphale suggests is the site of a history he’d really rather forget (that’s a lie, he desperately wishes to remember, to hold close and never let go, but he’s not sure he’s allowed, not sure that sort of clinging reverence is welcome).(Oh, and it's the first Christmas in the new world, but surely that doesn't matter at all.)
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 19
Kudos: 46
Collections: Good Omens Holiday Swap 2019





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [curious_Lissa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/curious_Lissa/gifts).



> GO Holiday Swap gift for [curiouslissa](curiouslissa.tumblr.com)! I hope you enjoy it <3

_**~11 April 1912~** _

The air smells different on this side of the Atlantic, Aziraphale thinks as he watches the stevedores[1] lowering passenger’s luggage into the lower bays. It’s something in the wind, it still blows in from the sea of course, but instead of smelling like fog or green and growing things, it smells of salt and soot and rich loam. He takes another deep breath and wonders if he’ll miss it the way he misses the smell of the Thames, they’re the same in a way, not entirely pleasant but unique and tasting of home in a way he can’t put to words.

There’s shouting below as one of the men loses his grip on the large cabin trunk he’s carrying. It smashes into his foot with a heavy thud and Aziraphale winces. He gestures subtly to ensure the man suffers only bruising rather than a broken foot. He feels vaguely guilty as he watches them, having paid for cabin service himself, money was no object after all, and rather hopes that his trunks would not be too much of a burden and that the men below wouldn’t be too rough on them. This entire venture to the Americas might have been for naught were it not for the books that now fill the second trunk he’d been obliged to acquire for just that purpose. He thinks of the odious man he spent the last few months trying to guide towards Good and Right and how he thinks, despite his best efforts, that man is going to go on to do terrible things. Not for the first time since he last saw the demon he wishes Crowley were around. In the past he’d always been able to point at the awful person Heaven wanted him to aid and Crowley would grin that wonderful, terrible grin of his and suddenly Aziraphale knew it would all be all right, because Crowley wouldn’t let Aziraphale’s Blessings stand. It was an unspoken facet of their Arrangement that Aziraphale had not realized he needed, relied on, until it was gone. 

He misses Crowley.

It’s a constant refrain these days.

He goes about his business in the bookshop and a customer comes by and Aziraphale thinks of how Crowley would delight in watching him dispatch with any foolish notions of book purchasing.

He eats a desert and thinks of what wine Crowley might like to pair with it, passes a carriage and remembers how Crowley would always shift so that Aziraphale walked closer to the horses and how embarrassed he would be if Aziraphale ever pointed that out. 

He walks through the park and his chest aches and he doesn’t know why, can’t find the words or the thoughts that might explain the emptiness in his palm or the shudder in his heart.

He misses Crowley and he knows he should not because Crowley is the enemy and Aziraphale is not meant to miss him or want to spend time with him or regret that the last words they spoke to each other were spat out, thoughtless and afraid, anger that wasn’t directed at Crowley at all but rather at Heaven and Hell and himself, but never at Crowley.

He sighs.

The baggage-master has appeared on the dock and, judging by the way he clasps the stevedores’ shoulders, their work is nearly complete. Aziraphale tries to remember the path to the stateroom where the small bag of books he plans to read over the course of the journey back to England is currently located. He knows it’s somewhere on the first deck, though the tour he’d been given yesterday was rapid and baffling. Before he can do more than idly wonder, he spots a steward moving through the milling crowd of passengers.

“Excuse me, dear boy,” he says as soon as the young man in within earshot.

“Evening there, sir,” the steward responds. He eyes Aziraphale up and down before straightening his posture almost imperceptibly. Aziraphale resists the urge to roll his eyes--humans are always acting stiffer around him, always more formal than they ever need to be. He wonders sometimes if it is the effect of the Divine on their hearts, if they subconsciously wanted to impress him[2]. The steward adjusts his tie. “If’n you’re inquirin’ about th’stateroom, please proceed to the first floor below deck,” he pauses to make a gesture towards the companionway behind Aziraphale before carefully continuing the clearly memorized script, “However, the cap’n recommends that all passengers stay on deck seeing as we’ll be pushing away soon.”

Aziraphale smiles at the lad, who smiles back after a moment.

“Thank you,” Aziraphale tells him, “I actually was wondering about the way to the stateroom, but I do believe I’ll stay up top for a bit. Take in the air as we move out of the city.”

The steward nods rapidly. “It’s right pretty, sir,” he says and now Aziraphale can recognize his accent as something from far further south than they currently find themselves. “My ma always wanted to see th’Lady up there.” He sounds sad, though not in the raw, aching way of new grief, this is a pain long held and long since come to terms with and Aziraphale hurts for him because humans were never meant to know that pain, were never meant to die at all and yet- It’s been nearly six thousand years and his failure to guard the Tree still stabs at him at the most inopportune times.

Aziraphale looks out at the bay. In the distance he can just barely make out the grey-green figure. He’s not human, is really nothing like them when one gets right down to it, but he thinks the emotion she stirs in his breast is probably quite akin to theirs.

The steward stands beside him for another long moment before Aziraphale remembers himself and gives the boy a smile and a nod and a gentle Blessing that no one else in his family might ever miss out on their close held dreams.

He doesn’t like to think on how Gabriel might respond to the idea, but there was something in the lines inscribed upon her base that Aziraphale associates with the way he thinks Heaven is meant to be, the way he thinks he’s meant to be.

Humans have always been so good with their words. He finds himself falling ever short of their ability, incapable of expressing himself in any manner that the emotions which roil within him deserve. 

So he stays on deck and he watches as the ship is tethered to a sturdy little tugboat and the dock begins to slide away beside them. For all its majesty, for all it’s larger-than-life splendor, New York falls away faster than Aziraphale had thought it might.

Soon the deck fills with excited murmuring and Aziraphale shifts so he might see past the crowd gathered along the railing. As the ship approaches the Lady he begins to pray, because who else is he meant to think on but the tired and the poor and the huddled masses? Who else is he meant to help but those yearning to breathe free?

He does not realize, and won’t for a great many years yet, that when he pictures those yearning to breathe free, he’s thinking of a demon and a bookshop and the casual freedom of companionship in the dark and quiet nights. 

His eyes linger on the statue long past the little tug boats releasing their ropes to putter away and the stewards bustling through, ensuring that each passenger not only knows where their quarters are but that they have been provided with a beverage and are satisfied. In fact, he doesn’t turn away until she’s just a speck on the horizon and a fog rolls in, obscuring her from view. He looks back towards the harbor, feeling suddenly overcome by the sensation of having missed out in some way. He’s not sure what it is he missed--he visited all the places one was supposed to while in New York and while he’d felt oddly lonely while he explored the city it was only to be expected, he was always lonely these days after all, had been for the last fifty years or so.

He feels the melancholy start to creep across the hills in his heart and firmly shakes himself. There is no time for any of that sort of moping about, he tells himself, ignoring the fact that he has nothing but time for the next few weeks as the ship makes its slow way back across the Atlantic. He glances down at the freshly polished and oiled wood of the railing beneath his hands and sighs.

Perhaps a short turn about the stateroom would free him of this mood, he thinks before his gaze is drawn once more in the direction of the statue and the city.

He nods his farewell to them and turns away.

* * *

_**~22 December 2019~** _

“What do you think?” Aziraphale asks. He’s twisting his hat between his hands, looking between Crowley’s face and the little cottage, nervous and hopeful and queasy in a way he hasn’t been in decades. It isn’t an uncomfortable feeling, quite the opposite in fact-- He’s always run away from his fears and his anxieties, fleeing the discomfort with the single minded determination of a soldier who’s never wanted to fight and made himself do so anyway. It’s almost... nice to revel in the sensation, in knowing that he cares about this, cares about Crowley not just liking it, but feeling welcome and comfortable and wanting to make it a home as much as Aziraphale does.

Crowley looks at the cottage, a blank but not unhappy look on what’s visible of his face past the sunglasses and over-large scarf[3]. 

“It’s alright,” he says.

“Alright?” Aziraphale asks, his gut sinking. He’d known as soon as Crowley agreed to try country-side living that this was the perfect place for them. There was a little garden out back, a bedroom on the first floor with terribly small windows that would make a wonderful library, to say nothing of the history the two of them shared with the place.

Aziraphale’s cheek burns with the remembered press of dry lips, the whispered vow, the quiet creak of the door closing.

“Ah, I mean it’s perfect, angel,” Crowley says, “This is the one you want, right?”

Aziraphale nods. He refuses to lie, he desperately wants this place to be theirs in the way it couldn’t before.

“Then it’s the one I want.” Crowley grins at him and takes his hand. “Now, give me a tour.”

So Aziraphale does. He shows Crowley the little bedroom at the top of the narrow stairs and the tiny kitchen[4] and the room with very bad lighting he thinks would make a good library and the den and in each room he looks to Crowley and he waits. Crowley peers into the corners and pokes at the little cracks in the plaster and nods his satisfaction before moving on to the next space. He’s never negative, but he’s never positive either and Aziraphale isn’t sure what that means.

Eventually, when they’re standing in the doorway at the back of the house, looking out at the overgrown ruin of the garden, Crowley cracks a real smile. It’s small, barely the faintest twitch of the left corner of his lips, but Aziraphale has spent centuries cataloging the demon’s expressions and that little twitch fills his heart with joy.

He chose well.

They’re going to be happy here, he just knows it.

They’ve been through so much, survived so much, he absolutely refuses to let them be anything but happy.

Beside him, lost in his own thoughts and worries about the way things are changing, Crowley wraps his arms around his chest and thinks that maybe, maybe, if he holds on tight enough the odd shivery feeling at the base of his lungs will go away.

* * *

**Footnotes:**

1 Aziraphale is quite unaware that the terms for this position have changed since the last time he spent any time around the ocean. For those among the reading audience whose vocabulary was learned after the popularization of the home computer, a stevedore is most commonly referred to as a dockhand, docker, or longshoreman. [return to text]

2 Once, and only once, he’d made the mistake of wondering aloud about this to Crowley who laughed and told him that it was nothing like that at all, merely that the humans were responding to the obvious British-ness of his entire being and really who would want to impress Upstairs anyway. Ridiculous.[return to text]

3 It was a gift from Aziraphale in the sense that Aziraphale had bought it from a lovely young woman on High Street who had seemed rather distressed about her finances. He overpaid by a large margin and then left the scarf in a conspicuous spot as the days turned colder, commenting periodically about how lovely the scarf was and how it would be a shame it anything were to happen to it until finally the bait was taken and the scarf stolen.[return to text]

4 He plans to learn to cook, he doesn’t even know where to begin, but Anathema tells him there are some lovely young people on something called ‘you-tube’ who will teach him the basics.[return to text]


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks to [dwarrowkings](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dwarrowkings/pseuds/dwarrowkings)/[ineffableeris](https://ineffableeris.tumblr.com/) for the wonderful beta <3<3

_**~Late Evening, 14 April 1912~** _

The first few days of the voyage pass almost without Aziraphale noticing. The weather is pleasant, if a bit chillier than he would prefer when on the open ocean. But, he supposes that’s to be expected this time of year. The ship itself is comfortable enough, though he laments that he is traveling in the direction he is. He knows the Titanic set off from Southampton earlier in the week. He’d rather hoped to have already returned to the UK by that time to see her off (or, if he’d been very lucky, score a berth upon her for the maiden voyage). 

He’s always liked that sort of thing--riding the fastest train, the first ship to cross some new body of water--participating in humanity’s smaller triumphs in a very human way. But, alas, he’s received orders for his next blessing in London and it cannot wait until the Titanic is due to return. That was the way of things sometimes, he thinks, and really it isn’t so bad, there will always be another chance to see the Grand Lady at her work. 

So, he goes about his business on the Carpathia. She’s a lovely old ship and since his business is composed, in large part, of enjoying the dining room’s offerings and making his way through the new books he acquired on this trip, he finds he’s rather productive and the days pass quickly. 

On the second night at sea, he finds himself in the smaller dining room feeling a tad overwhelmed by the number of passengers. It isn’t that he’d expected the ship to be empty, just that he’d been in New York City for long enough that he craves _emptiness._ Perhaps after this next blessing he might find his way out to the countryside, he thinks as he chooses the seat facing away from the main dining area. Perhaps he could take a few months to bask in the rare sunshine of what was looking to be a lovely spring and, if he’s very lucky, perhaps Gabriel won’t even pop by to scold him for his sloth. 

He’s just tucked into his meal (a rather daring seafood stew that he’s not yet quite sure about) when there’s a sudden commotion and he is jostled from behind. He sets his spoon down and pushes the stew away from himself (he’s just decided he does not like it). By the time he’s turned around there’s a slim young man falling towards him. 

“Steady on there,” he says as he catches the young man’s elbow and rights him, “What’s all the hullabaloo?” 

The young man pulls away, righting himself and, straightening his jacket, sketches an apologetic smile at Aziraphale. 

“Sorry sir,” he says, “I’m a bit unsteady still.” 

Aziraphale smiles at him. He’s wearing the crisp uniform of a crewman with carefully shined buttons and rank insignia. “Ah,” Aziraphale says, “Still getting your sea legs?” He’d miracled away his own corporations ability to feel queasy before even stepping foot on the boat but he’d watched many of the humans around him suffer through the effects of the sea over the last few days. 

“Yessir,” the young man says. His smile turns a tad more genuine and he holds out his hand for Aziraphale to shake, “A few years’ shipside and I still stumble around like a nesh the first few days. M’name’s Harold Cottam, sir, radio operator for the good lady hersen.” He reaches out to pat the closest bulkhead fondly. 

“A pleasure,” Aziraphale says, “Aziraphale Fell, at your service.” 

Mr. Cottam nods and takes a step back, “I just came for a spot of tea,” he says, “before I retire for the evening.” 

“Oh please,” Aziraphale says, “Do join me, I’m fascinated by the radio. Perhaps you might tell me of your work?” 

Aziraphale watches as Mr. Cottam lights up. He pulls out his pocket watch and checks the time before grinning and saying, “Mister Fell, I would be delighted. I’ve a scheduled call with the mainland shortly, but,” and here he glances at the pot of tea on Aziraphale’s table, “I’ve a short while yet.” 

“So,” Aziraphale says as Mr. Cottam settled into the chair across from him, “What _is_ happening in the world of radios?” 

Mr. Cottam is wonderfully knowledgeable about not only the specifics of operating radios, but also the current advancements in the science of radiography. Aziraphale normally isn’t one for modern technology--it’s not that he dislikes advancement, rather he’s always proud of the humans for every new thing they come up with. It’s just that, no matter how hard he tries to keep up, he inevitably feels slow. As soon as he feels he’s managed to get a good grip on some wonderful new invention, it’s already woefully out of vogue and he’s left to watch once more as the humans, with their lightning bug lives, race ahead once more. 

However, the wireless radio is one innovation he’s been sure to keep abreast of, delighting in the reports he’s gotten from On High which say the humans will soon begin ‘broadcasting’ music and conversations to each other en masse. He’s excited at the potential for good that the devices hold (to say nothing of being able to hear music more frequently than he is currently able). 

So, at his question, Mr. Cottam falls into an impassioned speech about the specific wireless equipment on the Carpathia (apparently the ship is outfitted with something called a spark-gap transmitter, which was, according to his companion, cutting edge). The time passes quickly and before Aziraphale is quite ready, Mr. Cottam is regretfully nodding to his pocket watch again and standing from the table. He bids Aziraphale a pleasant evening and turns on his heel, looking far steadier than he had on approach. 

Aziraphale finishes off the pot of tea and a few more of the wonderful scones before he too stands and departs for the deck to take in the stars for a bit before retiring to his berth for the night. 

It’s a cool night, this early in the year it always is so far north, and he delights in tucking his jacket tightly around himself against the chill. Of course he doesn’t have to feel the cold at all, if he doesn’t want to, but he rather likes experiencing everything the world has to offer. The warmth of the sun on his skin always seems so much sweeter when he’s felt the sting of cold. 

He looks up at the stars, at their far and stubborn twinkle, and he smiles because he once sat atop a low hill with Crowley and listened as the demon drunkenly pointed to constellations, scraping his greenstick twig fingers across the burnt-feather black of the sky. Crowley had paused after blearily explaining how neutron stars were born[1] and smiled crookedly at him and said, “‘M not supposed to, but I enjoy this.” He’d gestured between them and then, when Aziraphale couldn’t wrangle his ever flighty words quickly enough, he’d turned away, back to the stars above. 

He’s awfully lonely these days. He sighs into the night, sending out his mind in hope of settling himself by focusing on the quiet of the glass-sea. It doesn’t quite work, but it’s close enough and he’s able to reel those terrible thoughts back in, packing them away where they belong. 

He’s just decided to adjourn to his reading for the evening when he feels it. 

There’s a... the only thing he can call it is a _twitch_. Something in the air that wraps around his lungs and constricts, a serpent’s heavy coils pressing against his very essence and for a moment he wants to call out for Crowley. But it feels different than he imagines Crowley might, were their cores to brush against one another (and he carefully files that thought away to be examined later because it makes his gut do very strange things). 

He thinks Crowley would feel like the core of a neutron star, the remnant of a once mighty thing that’s been spent and burned up--it still shines, but only out of sheer stubbornness. 

This isn’t that, this isn’t the light he’s wanted to shelter beneath for millenia. 

This is... pain. 

It tightens around him, twitching and clawing its way into his heart. It rings in his ears, a death knell he can’t turn away from. The very essence of the world shudders against him. 

He clutches at his chest and resists the urge to throw himself into the sky[2]. There are people dying--about to die--afraid and wanting and he’s their Principality. 

He’s meant to save them. 

His wings ache to be freed and he’s glancing around to see if there are any humans looking before he remembers. Gabriel’s bored voice rings in his ears, “Big things coming down the pipeline, Aziraphale old buddy,” he Archangel had said not three weeks previously, “I can’t say much yet.” There he’d placed one finger against the side of his nose in a gesture Aziraphale wasn’t quite sure he was using correctly, “But, it’s all pretty delicate. So, no Miracles until I give you the go ahead again.” He had clapped one square hands down on Aziraphale’s shoulder and squeezed, his shining teeth a rictus grin. “Big things!” And then he was gone and now Aziraphale realizes exactly what that order means. 

He can’t unfurl his wings. There’s _something else_ on the horizon and if it’s anything like the other things Heaven has called ‘big’ throughout history.... Well, he’s going to want to be on Earth where he can help and not trapped in the Heavenly version of remedial maths writing lines such as ‘I shan’t over indulge on Mircles’. 

What that means right now though is that he can’t fly to their aid, can’t snap his fingers and fix whatever has gone awry. 

Can’t do the one blessed thing he was created to do. 

His wings _ache._

He tears his attention away from the sea and the reflections of the stars upon its crystal surface. He might not be able to fly to their aide, but he can certainly warn the captain that there’s something afoot. Perhaps the ship might be able to shift course. He has just started towards the helm when he sees young Mr. Cottam dashing across the deck, his jacket open and his eyes wild. 

“Captain Rostron!” The radio operator’s voice cracks, his feet skidding a bit as he grabs at the handrail to pull himself to a stop, yanking open the door leading towards the helm. 

“Mr. Cottam!” Aziraphale calls. He crosses the space between them in far fewer steps than a human might require, but it's so instinctive he doesn’t think it even qualifies as a miracle really. 

Mr. Cottam doesn’t stop, but he does pause, long enough to look back at Aziraphale and shout, his voice filled with the same dread that’s wrapped around the angel’s heart and lungs. 

“It’s the Titanic, she’s going down.” Then he’s off, slipping through the doorway and shouting for the captain once more. 

The snake coiled around him steals the last of his breath. 

Three thousand three hundred souls are aboard that ship, the newspaper article had said. 

Three thousand and three hundred helpless in the water and tiny lifeboats, their hearts shrieking out for his help. And here he is, wings clipped like a common budgie. 

He nods to Mr. Cottam and, ignoring Gabriel’s command for the first of many times that night, sends a minor blessing to steady the young man’s feet. 

He might not be allowed to help the people on the Titanic directly, but he’ll be damned if he doesn’t do _something_. 

* * *

At the precise moment Aziraphale resolves to bend his orders from Highest Heaven, on the other side of the Atlantic, where he is curled tight in the same covers he has been ensconced in for the last fifty years, Crowley twitches. 

This is a different sort of twitch from the one Aziraphale is currently feeling ripple through the fabric of reality in the northern seas. This is a more visceral, more human sort of twitch (though both Aziraphale and Crowley would have been offended to hear it described that way). Crowley is asleep and he is dreaming[3]. His left fist is clenched tight, as it has been for nearly five years now. When he awakens (far sooner than he had intended), it will ache for weeks from the tension. His right hand is slid beneath his head, fingers tangled in hair that has grown far longer than Crowley has worn it for a great many years. His knees, which he never feels he’s quite got the hang of, are pulled close to his chest, pressing against himself in a mockery of the intimacy he knows he cannot have. 

There is a frown on his face, despite the lovely dream. 

And then, he twitches. 

A little muscle at the base of his spine, where the first hints always reach him that Aziraphale has found trouble, contracts and releases and then settles back into placidity as if it had never moved at all. 

Crowley, unaware, sleeps on. 

* * *

_**~17 December 2019~** _

Almost without realizing it, Aziraphale finds himself swept up in all the minutiae that seem to crop up when one had recently moved residences. He spends each morning carefully checking over each and every book that he’s elected to migrate from the bookshop. It’s been decades since he’s really read or maintained a few of them and he finds the work therapeutic in a way he had not expected it would be. The entire affair with the End of Days had been thirteen years of slow building stress followed by what he now realized was a week long panic attack. It’s... nice, he thinks, to sit in a library with his glasses on his nose and a mug of tea by his side, and gently turn each page, reading it and scanning it for damage that he might repair with the little librarian’s kit that sat open to his right. 

His mornings slip away as he drinks his tea and revels in the comforting, familiar humanity of the written word. When the grandfather clock that came with the cottage strikes half-noon he carefully marks his page with a slim slip of velum[4] and stands, arching his back in an unnecessary, but satisfying stretch. Then, he collects his mug and any other dishware that has made the trek to the library, and moves towards the little kitchen. 

He always pauses on this journey to stand at the back door and peer out into the garden. It’s late December and the weather is miserable, all sleet and grappled snow, but Crowley has spent every morning out there, viciously yanking the remnants of the previous owner’s neglect from the soil. When Aziraphale asked why he didn’t just snap it all away come spring, he’d received only a dour look. So, instead of saying anything else, he simply ensured that there was a warm meal (and drink) waiting for Crowley when he finally deigned to come back in from the cold. 

Crowley slumps in at a quarter-to, just like he has for the last five days. He gives Aziraphale a small smile, a quirk of the lips and nothing more; the tight ball at the center of Aziraphale’s chest aches. 

Because the truth is this- Aziraphale had rather hoped coming to the cottage would change things, would make Crowley happy or content or at the very least lift some of the weight that seems to be pressing down on his shoulders. 

But, that doesn’t seem to be the case. Crowley had smiled at the garden on that first night and he continued to appear at mealtimes, though he doesn’t always eat. It’s just that-- well, Aziraphale knows Crowley better than he knows even himself and there’s something wrong, something off. Crowley has never been overly physical, but before they came here he’d begun to touch Aziraphale, just little brushes of fingertips as they shared a bottle back and forth or a gentle hand at the small of his back when he passed behind Aziraphale. His skin aches with the memory of each touch, intended and desired and now gone. 

Crowley has curled in on himself here, pulling back until he is nothing more than one of the shriveled weeds in the back garden, dry and crumbling and destined for the waste heap. 

Aziraphale doesn’t know what to do, doesn’t know if he’s done anything wrong in the first place, and so he can only wait and hope that the situation improves. He knows that cohabitation is a big step, a terrifying leap from maintaining the careful distance between Soho and Mayfair to the great shared unknown that stretches before them now. But, well he’d always thought that if one of them struggled they both would and if one of them settled quickly then that would hold for the other as well. 

He never expected to find himself so comfortable while simultaneously fearing that Crowley will never be comfortable here. 

He hopes it will come in time. 

* * *

It does not come in time. 

In fact, if anything it grows worse. In their first week at the cottage, Crowley had been happy to sit and sip his coffee while Aziraphale enjoyed an ever rotating selection of breakfast delights. He’d even been the one to cook on their second morning, going as far as to take the bite of pancake from Aziraphale’s fork when it was offered. 

“Sweet,” he’d muttered, blushing violently red, “Too sweet for me.” He glanced up at Aziraphale then, a quick dart of his eyes from the table to Aziraphale and then away again, “Perfect for you, though, angel.” 

Aziraphale’s heart had sung, soared, spinning in wild little pirouettes around his chest because yes, _yes,_ finally Crowley was going to allow him in, allow him to lavish the demon in all the affection Aziraphale had been denying both of them for so long. Then, Crowley had vanished out to the garden to tear at the Earth for awhile and Aziraphhale had carried that warmth with him for the rest of the day. 

By day five, Crowley won’t meet Aziraphale’s gaze over the table and his smile is a faded memory of that infinitesimal thing it had been at the beginning of the week. 

On the seventh day, Crowley doesn’t come to breakfast.

**Footnotes:**

1 “They’re what left,” he’d said, “After.” And Aziraphale had asked, “After what?” And Crowley had looked into his eyes, pupils open maws of black, after hungrily devouring every scrap of the celestial dome they could. Aziraphale’s own eyes are dishwater grey, blurred and round and nothing much at all to gaze upon, but Crowley _had_ looked, and he’d said, “After the biggest stars die. They all die eventually, growing bigger and bigger and bigger, reaching out so much farther than they were meant to, and then Falling back, leaving behind all the most important bits of themselves.” [return to text]

2Because that sort of pain, that desperate thrust of _help-us-oh-god-please_ isn’t casual or accidental. [return to text]

3At this moment, he dreams of the first time he ever tasted honey. He’d come upon Aziraphale half slathered in the stuff attempting to bargain with a furious queen and her drones and had laughed himself silly. He’d snapped and the bees allowed the theft of their labor and he and Aziraphale had enjoyed honey scraped across fresh bread, the quiet breeze filtering through their hair and a companionable silence between them. Crowley often dreamed of that moment, of how badly he’d wanted to kiss the taste of honey from Aziraphale’s mouth. [return to text]

4The velum is, in fact, carefully cut from the bottom of a letter that Crowley sent him a few centuries ago. He deemed it too dangerous to keep the letter (though all it said, in Crowley’s scratched handwriting, was ‘A, the usual place? I have wine. -C’) and had instead cut the bottom away. He likes the scrap, it feels egg-shell smooth in the way of much-handled expensive paper and warm in his hands, no matter how cool the air around him is. [return to text]


End file.
